Momentum OKC 2014

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

E

ach year, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition entertains submissions from the state's best and boldest artists under 30 for their annual arts event, Momentum. It's a young, fast and raucous celebration of a side of Oklahoma that rarely gets packaged for export, emphasizing the dissonant notes in the heartland's major-key cultural melody.

Momentum OKC 2014 showcased a number of challenging and beautiful works soundtracked by Oklahoma natives TALLOWS and John Wayne's Bitches. A heavy but manageable crowd buzzed throughout the space, nursing local craft beers and sustaining the night's "full-speed" aspirations. The real design winner was the OKC Farmers Public Market, which—gorgeous enough in its own right—could not have been more conducive to this explosive meeting between the state's young guard and its capitol city's rustic frontier history.

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

Shining especially bright was the work of 2014 Momentum Spotlight Artist Eli Casiano, whose tripped-out pop culture nightmare portraits demanded the attention of everyone in the room. His four pieces hung around a suspended speaker looping a dense, sample-based sound collage thundering somewhere between the jagged, power tool drone of late-era Swans and the familiar contours of mid-90s radio R&B. The music sought you out from across the room, and the paintings clutched you fiendishly by the lymph nodes.

“Rehashing images from movies, comics and TV, Casiano’s work draws in viewers with its recognizable imagery while challenging our connections to these representations. Casiano’s paintings and sounds mimic the bombardment of information we face in an age of increasing technological communication.”  - OVAC

Courtesy of EliCasiano.com

His Momentum exhibit, End in Itself, comments on our cut-and-paste culture of endless visual stimuli by reworking a very particular stripe of popular childhood Americana into a form that retains its familiarity while verging with confidence on the horrific. He both resists and engages these images, creating an aesthetic and moral tension unmatched in its barbed, complex representation of American cultural memory.

Casiano has talked about the importance of transformation in his work, and what's especially compelling here is the pain of these transitions as his figures morph from doe-eyed cinematic touchstones into hideous, shrieking abominations begging for their former dignity. Coursing beneath it all is a current of sharp ethnic consciousness whose jittering zaps illuminate a culture in which identity is malleable and unfixed.

While End in Itself hovered menacingly above the rest of the work at Momentum, the space was filled with interesting and powerful pieces that represented the diversity, pugnacity, and range of aesthetic possibilities within a new wave of Oklahoma creative culture. If you missed it this year, don't make the same mistake next time.

Photo by Jezy J. Gray

::: For more information on Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, visit their Facebook page :::

::: Eli Casiano's work, resume and contact information can be found at elicasiano.com :::